6:00 am, January 8, 2023
Putting my clocks back at the end of October (the only time I ever put a clock backwards, I hasten to add) brought home memories of an old nemesis of mine, who worked for a rival dealership back in the late 1990s when I first set up as an independent.
Neil – or Neil the Eel, as he was known to many of us in the trade – was one of the slipperiest characters you could never wish to meet.
His focus on life was to essentially get away with whatever he could, no matter how ridiculous or unethical it may seem, provided it benefited him.
So much so, in fact, that alongside his used car lot, Neil also ran a ‘mileage correction’ operation from the same premises. If ever there was a definition of hidden in plain sight, that was it…
In addition, he had a few other ‘businesses’, including a screen-printing workshop specialising in (allegedly) counterfeit sportswear and another cash-only operation selling previously loved (and possibly missed) jewellery.
He wasn’t a nice man, but somehow he managed to get away with everything, despite his unprincipled practices standing out like a polar bear in the Sahara.
That was until the week when I sold a Peugeot 405 that I’d taken in part-exchange by putting it straight through the auctions over at Walsall.
The car had been used as a minicab in Wolverhampton, and while it was powered by the Peugeot-Citroen non-turbo XUD engine, therefore meaning that with 380,000 miles on the clock it was barely run-in, it was hardly retail fodder.
No self-respecting customer would have been actively seeking such a thing, and I’d probably not have agreed to take it in part-exchange were it not for the fact that the owner was chopping it in against an identical, much-lower-mileage 405 that was also destined for a life on the rank, was paying cash (back when cash was king) and was a pretty loyal repeat customer.
I allowed him roughly what I reckoned I’d get back for it and drove it over to the auction house, where I bought something a lot more saleable (a low-mileage Nissan Micra, if I recall correctly) to sell back at this end.
Imagine my amusement, then, when said 405 appeared four or five days later across the road at Neil’s, wearing a new set of budget tyres, a freshly repainted bonnet (to hide the marks left by the taxi livery) and a £3,000 price tag, not to mention a mileage hair cut to the tune of 300,000 miles.
There and then, I had my ‘Baldrick moment’ and a cunning plan was hatched…
First, I gave my taxi driver friend a call to tell him I knew of another low-mileage 405 diesel if he was interested.
Then I gave my contact at the newspaper a tip-off – the display ads guys had no love for Neil as he’d pooh-poohed them in favour of Friday Ad, so they put the reporter who also did the motoring pages (back in the glory days of journalism) on to the story, where he’d wait with tea and biscuits on my lot and watch the drama unfold.
The final piece of said drama would involve the local constabulary.
Regular readers of this column may recall that I accidentally became mates with a CID officer after selling him a Vauxhall Cavalier in the early Nineties – his name was Detective Sergeant Coates.
With DS Coates suitably tipped off and enjoying custard creams with me and the local newspaper hack in my caravan, the atmosphere grew tense as we awaited the arrival of the local private-hire magnate, soon to become key witness.
It played out beautifully – with pure slapstick appeal.
No sooner had the taxi boss realised he was looking at a hastily tarted-up car that he used to own than DS Coates wandered on to the scene – the one and only time in my life where I’ve ever heard a police officer genuinely say ‘Ello, ello, ello, what’s goin’ on ’ere then?’
Being the slippery eel that he was, Neil’s first reaction was to scarper – swiftly pursued by a CID officer and a newspaper reporter, as well as a fat car dealer and an inquisitive taxi driver (the latter two of whom simply wanted to see how it all ended) – in a scene that could have come straight from the closing credits of a Benny Hill TV programme.
The moment became even funnier when Neil attempted to pole-vault over a cardboard box using a broom handle, failed miserably and landed on top of it, whereupon the box exploded and discharged its contents of knock-off branded tracksuit tops all over a damp Midlands industrial estate.
Justice had been served. Well, almost…
Imagine my dismay when the following week’s paper came out led by the headline ‘Jewellery heist discovered among fake sportswear haul’ with no mention of the hero of the hour (the fat car dealer), the Peugeot 405 or the mileage adjustment, which continued for several more years after Neil the Eel returned from a 12-month vacation at Her Majesty’s Pleasure…
This column appears in the current edition of Car Dealer – issue 178 – along with news, reviews, features and much more. Click here to read and download it for FREE!
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